This is kind of a rough draft for submission to The Sun, a literary magazine that invites its readers to submit essays on certain subjects each month.  One that is coming in the future intrigues me, The Back Door, so this is kind of a rough draft for that assignment.

The Back Door

When I think of a back door, I feel comfortable – it is a friendly door, rather common, not stuffy and formal like the front door.  The first back door I remember is one in northern Illinois, particularly because of its importance during the winter.  All layered up in our jackets and hats and mittens and mufflers and galoshes, my friends and I would venture out and have our snowball fights, build our snowmen, make our snow angels and then arrive at the back door encrusted with snow from head to toe, wanting to come in and get warm and return to our playroom in the basement.

Which was a good thing,  because Mom would open the door and although we had much to tell her about our adventures, there was no time for that.  “Go right downstairs!” “Mom, we made a…” “Don’t stop, just keep going!”  Her voice was kind but meant business and we’d head downstairs to the laundry area where the cement floor could handle all the dripping melting snow from our clothes.  It didn’t matter how many times we went out over the winter while I was growing up, that scene was re-created time and again until it is indelible in my mind.  I can see her standing there like a shepherdess making sure we didn’t venture from the straight path from the back door to the basement stairs, as we clomped past her like snowmen ourselves, eating the snow off our mittens as we went. 

It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that even with that orchestrated plan,  she must have had to swab the kitchen floor behind us each and every time.  It is only now that I have raised three sons that I realize what she must have felt when she opened the back door.  Maybe forty five minutes of peace interrupted by cold, wet, noisy chaos stomping past her,  her precious time alone with her thoughts ending with a demand for swift action that could not be delayed for yet another moment.    We climbed back up the stairs hungry and thirsty, the edges of our sleeves and pant legs still a little wet, looking for a safe place to sit.  Then she re-opened her world to us once again, with a selflessness that cannot be learned, but only nourished by love and the peace at the end of the day, when the de-thawed children collapsed into bed, worn out, happy and warmed by a mother’s love.